Soccer Lessons

I am a soccer fan.  I watch it (mainly on TV) regularly and have my favourite teams.  I also take en interest in football management - especially in the ‘management merry-go-round’ where managers are sacked by one club and then employed by another.  

Over the last 20 or 30 years in the UK soccer world, there has been a steady but consistent move from soccer management to soccer coaching.  British managers, especially in the  Premier League (the top tier of English soccer) have been replaced by European coaches.

It is obvious that good soccer coaches or mangers earn the respect of their players and create a ‘playing system’ and an environment (or culture) in which players want to perform for their colleagues, club and coach.

Poor managers do exactly the opposite of these things.  They lack the respect of players (known as ‘losing the dressing room’) and fail to creature that supportive culture.

Players in an unsupportive culture have more (and longer-lasting) injuries and (intentionally or not) tend to lose form and fail to  be competitive.

So, take an interest.  Watch how managers/coaches react to wins or defeats, how they respond to questions or comments by TV pundits, how they handle out-of-form players and so on.  Then note the upturn or downturn in performance or results - and try to work out what works with a soccer team.  

Think about how as shifts to less management and more coaching might help you crest a supportive environment and culture.

You should then be able to work out what might work with your work team, leading to higher performance snd productivity.

Engaging the Workforce

 HR professionals have been trying for years to discover  how to improve employee engagement and productivity,

A collaboration between Wharton Neuroscience Initiative (WNI) and global consulting firm Slalom is aiming to find out.

By giving EEG headsets to over 650 volunteer Slalom employees and studying the recordings during their workdays, the researcers were able to draw some interesting conclusions.

For example, the study reported that “Zoom fatigue” is a real phenomenon. Due to a lower need to travel to meetings, a practice of scheduling back-to-back meetings has become the norm in many organisations, but the study shows that endless meetings depress brain waves and reduce motivation.

Results from the EEG scans showed that breaks as short as ten minutes can have a significant positive effect on brain activity throughout the day.  Employees who took ten-minute breaks between meetings showed more brain signals associated with lower stress levels and deep, creative thought.

“Employees who work together locally share more experiences both at work and in the local community and are bound together by a shared language and culture, By contrast, employees working in global markets may lack these shared experiences, encounter cultural differences, and face significant time-zone differences with their colleagues around the world.” 

This clearly has implications for working-from-home strategies.

Getting Engaged

HR professionals have been trying for years to discover  how to improve employee engagement and productivity,

A collaboration between Wharton Neuroscience Initiative (WNI) and global consulting firm Slalom is aiming to find out.

By giving EEG headsets to over 650 volunteer Slalom employees and studying the recordings during their workdays, the researcers were able to draw some interesting conclusions.

For example, the study reported that “Zoom fatigue” is a real phenomenon. Due to a lower need to travel to meetings, a practice of scheduling back-to-back meetings has become the norm in many organisations, but the study shows that endless meetings depress brain waves and reduce motivation.

Results from the EEG scans showed that breaks as short as ten minutes can have a significant positive effect on brain activity throughout the day.  Employees who took ten-minute breaks between meetings showed more brain signals associated with lower stress levels and deep, creative thought.

“Employees who work together locally share more experiences both at work and in the local community and are bound together by a shared language and culture, By contrast, employees working in global markets may lack these shared experiences, encounter cultural differences, and face significant time-zone differences with their colleagues around the world.” 

This clearly has implications for working-from-home strategies.

Soccer Lessons

I  am a soccer fan.  I watch it (mainly on TV) regularly and have my favourite teams.  I also take an interest in football management - especially in the ‘management merry-go-round’ where managers are sacked by one club and then employed by another.  

Over the last 20 or 30 years in the UK soccer world, there has been a steady but consistent move from soccer management to soccer coaching.  British managers, especially in the  Premier League (the top tier of English soccer) have been replaced by European caches.

It is obvious that good soccer coaches or mangers earn the respect of their players and create a ‘playing system’ and an environment (or culture) in which players want to perform for their colleagues, club and coach.

Poor managers do exactly the opposite.  They lack the respect of players (known as ‘losing the dressing room’) and fail to create that supportive culture.

Players in an unsupportive culture have more (and longer-lasting) injuries and (intentionally or not) tend to lose form and fail to  be competitive.

So, take an interest.  Watch how managers/coaches react to wins or defeats, how they respond to questions or comments by TV pundits, how they handle out-of-form players and so on.  Then note the upturn or downturn in performance or results - and try to work out what works with a soccer team.  

Think about how a shift to less management and more coaching might help you crest a supportive environment and culture in your organisation.

You should then be able to work out what might work with your work team, leading to higher performance snd productivity.

Don't give it to the rich?

Productivity growth has been falling or stagnating for the last couple of decades.

Everyone seems surprised.  (Well pundits, journalists and politicians do!)

I'm not!

The growth referred to above was mostly in the manufacturing sector - where productivity growth is relatively easy to accomplish ... especially with the help of new technologies.

But most developed nations over the last few decades have moved from manufacturing to service industries.  It is much harder to make significant gains in productivity in the service sector and so productivty growth has declined.

Logical - not surprising.

Will AI (as a technology with obvious applications and implications for the service sector) give us the productivity boost we seek?

It might .... but whether we can cope with those gains is questionable.

Will the wealth gains be shared amongst the already rich - leaving the rest of us with no jobs, no wealth and no hope.  I'm not sure .... but the fact that the application of AI is largely in the hands of the already super-rich, doesn't fill me with confidence.

The British Productivity Malaise

Though this post refers specifically to the UK, there are lessons for most nations … o don’t turn the page… read on!

UK productivity stagnated some times ago and has been bouncing along the bottom of most nationality comparison charts for too long.

Serval people far more important than me have tried to explain the reasons behind this state of affairs…. But from what I’ve read, these people know little about productivity.

Liz Truss, for example, was very briefly the UK Prime Minister and she talked about UK workers, and especially those in the north, having to ‘pull their weight’ and ‘graft more’.  The only thing she got right here was the recognition that productivity in the North of the country is significantly lower than in the South.

Did she stop to think why this might be?  It doesn’t seem like it.  She just assumed that since productivity is measured in terms of GDP per worker or per hour worked, it must be underperforming workers that are responsible for the North-South divide. 

(Though I have named Liz Truss (because if the leader of the government does not understand the issues, why should anyone else) this view is shared by many others amongst the ‘great and the good’, the policymakers and strategists.

However, the ‘gap’ or divide is a result of UK exports depending largely on financial services- and financial services firms being largely based in the South of the country.  This is a structural, geopolitical issue and drastically skews the productivity figures in favour of the South.

Now,I am not suggesting that we should not concentrate on improving productivity in the North but to start from a position of blame and recrimination does no good at all.

We need to ensure the North receives the same level of investment as the South, that Norther workers have the same training and development opportunities and that the northern infrastructrure is developed.  (We have in the government a ‘levelling up’ secretary of state … what are they doing?)

Poor productivity is rarely a symptom of, or the result of, poor work rates; it is almost always the result of under-investment, poor infrastructure and poor systems.

If you understand the problem ,you have some chance of solving it.  Those politicians who take the easy line (workers need to graft more) are simply demonstrating that they either do not understand the problem or find it too difficult to solve, so make sure they pass the blame (and the buck)

The Future Manager

Technology has changed the role of a manager - by creating a situation where many managers do their own typing, their own diary management, their own meeting arrangements and so on - tasks which were once most often undertaken by a secretary or P.A.

Now we have the much-vaunted rise of AI, which might take over a number of the ‘real management’ tasks  - organising, controlling, decision-making and so on.

So, whither managers - or should that be wither managers.  What will be the role of the manager in the future?  I can’t say I know, but I suspect there will be meaningful changes.

Do As You Would Be Done By

Holding employees accountable for their behaviour and their work outcomes is important.  But it needs to exist in a supportive and trusting culture so that those employees are performing whilst being, and feeling, supported.  They need to be engaged with the organisation and its mission and feel that, when appropriate, their voice is heard.

If he/she expects employees to conduct themselves in a particular way, the manager must ensure their own conduct exemplifies such an approach and that they serve as a role model.

Any ‘rules’ must be simple and clear.  They should be explained in a format that allows feedback, part of an honest dialogue between manager and employees.

Employees are much more likely to respect and trust their manager when that manager demonstrates respect for, and trust in, the employees.  Trust and respect are mutual phenomena.

This largely equates to a culture of ‘do as you would be done by’.

If carried out in a clear and consistent manner, the manager and employees blend into a mutually respectful and engaged team.

The result is inevitably higher performance and productivity.

Evaluate Potential Tools

There are lots of tools available that purport to help you raise productivity.  These may be conceptual tools and models, mathematical models or software tools.

How many organisations that adopt one of these tools have done so on the basis of a rigorous, systematic evaluation or assessment?  How do they know they have selected an appropriate tool?

Firstly, of course, you should be clear about the problem you are trying to solve or the opportunity you are trying to seize.  You should retain a degree of flexibility  by thinking about your business as it is changing - and whether a particular model or tool fits you now snd forward into the future.

You should consider whether a proposed model or tool (especially a software tool) will integrate with your existing systems and toolset and whether the user interface will provide problems because of a clash with existing tools.

Think about how much help (and the cost of that help) will be needed to apply a model or tool - and whether some sort of trial is available.

Of course, you have to assess likely outcomes - but think about failure as well as success.  What is the worst case scenario of a failed project?  What are the various risks?

If you understand these factors, you can make a much more informed judgment of which model or tool to adopt and you are much more likely to be successful in that adoption.

Engage Your Employees

There is increasing evidence that high performance and productivity comes from workers who are engaged with the organisation …. aware of, and preferably sharing, its value set; aware of, and preferably invested in, its longer-term mission.

Engaged individuals are much more likely to contribute to formal and informal innovation processes, much more likely to be members of strong teams, much more likely to be error free.

This means that executives and managers must exhibit leadership practises that increase and support employee engagement - ensuring that employees themselves exhibit qualities of optimism, resilience, self-development, and flexibility.

Importantly, research is emerging which suggests that these effects are maintained over time - as long as employees continue to ne engaged, they continue to perform well.

You might think that this sounds trite and obvious ….but, if so, presumably you are doing all you can to increase and maintain employee engagement.  If not,, you have an under-performing team or organisation.

Plan your Planning

We all know that to.be successful in our career, we have to plan ahead, in our job, we have to plan ahead' in our life, we have to plan ahead.

Although we know this is true, we often forget to do it

When should we do it?

So, when do we do it.  

Forgetting about work-life balance, the weekend is a good time.

At weekend, we should be able to reflect on the past week,. 

What  did we achieve?

What goals did we meet?

What goals did we not meet?

Why not?

What circumstances have changed?

What goals need to be adjusted?

We should also know our availability for the coming week?

So, we can plan.

In fact we can forget the above comment about work-life balance.  When planning we can take account of work-life balance, planning in domestic or family matters.

So, schedule time for planning past reflection and future planning.   

Plan to plan.  It makes sense. It should help work-life balance.  It should make you more productive.

Should it be Productivity at all costs?

We have all seen examples of business leaders focusing exclusively on productivity growth - and failing to develop the business.

Elon Musk - and his (‘hard-nosed’) approach to managing Twitter (now ‘X’) is just one example.

Does this mean that a very strong focus on productivity is wrong?

As often is the case, the answer is ’No…. BUT ….)

A completely ‘hard-edged’ focus on the bottom line, on costs, can be dangerous.

There arere too many ‘soft’ factors involved in productivity - factors such as skill levels, culture, motivation, creativity.   These generally take a longer time to get right. But leaders who forget to address these softer factors - concentrating only on hard and structural factors - will fail to achieve peak performance.

So, take a full-throttle approach to productivity improvement but make sure you include the longer-term, softer factors to build the ’top line’ of the productivity ratio, whilst taking your hard-nosed look at the bottom line.

Should You Take a Vacation?

The answer to the question is obvious.

Yes, you should.

We all need a break from work occasionally to rid ourselves of accumulated stress, to refresh ourselves.  

But I've learned that there are things you can do to help maintain productivity whilst still having x complete break.

Firstly - prepare for the vacation.

One of the worst things about a vacation is returning to several dozen (or even several hundred) unanswered emails.  So make sure everyone in the office who might email you while you are away knows you will be away and incommunicado - you will NOT be answering work-related emails.

Also, tie up all the loose ends you can that could result in emails or other forms of message.

Delegate tasks to member of your team - making sure that they have the knowledge they need to accept the responsibility - and making sure that others working on the same projects or in the same area know who has the responsibility.

If you have cyclical meetings or tasks due during the vacation period, try to automate and schedule key parts of those tasks to keep things moving in your absence - it may, for example, be possible to prepare reports for meetings (as drafts which your team members van update if necessary)

Secondly, prepare for your return - plan as far as possible, your first day back ... at least to cover key priories or key projects.  Don't over plan - you have to be flexible enough to react to things that might have happened while you are away.

Thirdly, build in a buffer.  If you can give yourself a day off after your return before you start work.  This allows ytou to think, reflect and clear your ghad, getting back into 'work mode'.

Fourthly, try to include some tasks or meetings on your first day back that will interest you or you will enjoy.

if you follow this simple approach, your return to work will be easier and you will be more productive.

Who are You?

Your personal productivity depends on how well you know yourself.

What interests you?

What are you good at?  

What don't you like doing?

In the past, when have you performed well - and what were the circumstances?

Each of us is different.  We have different interests, different motivations, different abilities, different skills.  

This means we approach work tasks differently.

If we understand ourselves, we can more effectively plan our approach to new tasks to ensure we deal with them effectively and efficiently.  We should also realise where we lack the appropriate knowledge or skills and make sure we get help from others with that knowledge or those skills.  We should also be able to make reasonable and realistic assessments of timescales required. 

Understanding yourself actually creates a more effective, more productive you.  A truly virtuous circle.

Is it OK to use the word 'productivity'?

At the personal level, many people associate the word ‘productivity’ with working (too) hard, suffering a poor work-life balance and increasing stress.

At the organisation level, many people associate the word ‘productivity’ with working harder, restructurings and layoffs.

At national level, few people understand the word ‘productivity’ - talk about it confuses and frightens them.

Productivity is a difficult (and dirty) word for all of these people.

Yet, at the national level, increasing productivity has been the driving force underlying improved living standards and social gains.

At the organisational level, increasing productivity has been the driving force underlying improved profits and job security.

At the personal level, increasing productivity has been the driving force underlying a reduction in drudgery and improved leisure time.

All the other ills (those mentioned above) are the result of a lack of understanding and a mismanagement of the consequences of improving productivity.

Poor governments fail to understand their role in improving productivity.  This is essentially building the infrastructure that creates the potential for higher productivity (a favourable  macroeconomic climate and appropriate transport, technology and communications infrastructures).

Poor managers fail to take the steps necessary to exploit any potential for higher productivity provided by effective government policies snd the current market for their products.  They also often fail to invest in developing the skills of their workforce.

Poor individuals fail to organise their work (and even their life) to make themselves more productive.  They fail to invest the time to maximise their use of work-based and work-related tools snd technologies.

Productivity is necessary.  But so is an understanding of it by those who take decisions that can affect it.  So, use then word more often - and explain it more clearly. 

Its not the medium - or even the message.

Most of us have done some form of study that involves a section on improving communications.

We learn about the importance of making any message appropriate to the target audience - using the right language, using appropriate images, and so on.

We also learn about choosing the medium for the message according to factors such as the need for speed, the need for feedback loops, etc.

Yes, it is neither of these that is the main factor in determining the effectiveness of communication.

What matters most is the desire to communicate. Does the sender of the message really want to communicate - clearly  - to achieve his/her desired results…. or is the communication process a ‘box-ticking’ exercise. 

Where there’s a will, there’s communication.

Where there isn’t, there is much more likely to be confusion and misunderstanding. 

 

Technology isn't always helpful

Just imagine you were the CEO of Walmart several years ago.  

You can see that Amazon is starting to gain a foothold in markets beyond the books and music where it started.

You know you have to have some kind of response, some preparation for when Amazon (or someone like Amazon) starts to intrude on your core markets.

You also know that any significant excursion into online sales is going to be expensive.

Yet you can’t abandon your successful, physical stores - or fail to maintain your investment in improving them…. they are not exempt from fierce competition.

This means that the advance of technology has resulted in you having to make two sets of investment, rather than one, to maintain or grow your market share.

The  same dilemma hit newspapers who had to start experimenting with digital print and online sales alongside their traditional distribution methods.

A few companies in each of these different sectors have been successful, but there is a long tail of companies who have experienced declining sales and the threat of extinction.

Why am I talking about this in a productivity blog?

Because this explains some of the slowdown in productivity over the last decade.

This is probably a temporary phenomenon.  When the winners emerge and the losers go to the wall, overall productivity should rise.

The problem, then, is there might be one company to rule them all (Amazon?) with the attendant problems of monopoly.

Keeping It (Very) Simple

Sometimes keeping things simple yields the best results.  This is particularly true for start-ups and small businesses.

Don’t get sucked into complex (and expensive) systems of control or ‘improvement’. Stick to the basics.

Set realistic goals (consistent with your declared mission and vision). If the goals are long-term, set intermediate targets.

Communicate those goals/targets throughout the organisation (especially to those who can influence them).

Make sure staff have the skills and support needed to realise those goals.

Measure progress towards those goals.

Review the measures regularly and take corrective action where they indicate a lack of expected progress.

Reward those who excel in their work and accelerate progress towards goals.

Ensure the goals stay relevant as conditions or circumstances change.